This invention relates to a method and apparatus for collecting poultry from poultry houses. To meet the ever increasing demand for chicken in the American diet, a mass production process has evolved wherein a centrally located processing plant is supplied with live chickens from an array of surrounding satellite chicken farms.
Each chicken farm is individually operated and includes a number of poultry houses where the chickens are confined from the baby chick stage to the time they are harvested. By confining the chickens, productivity is increased while the operating costs are lowered. However, by confining the chickens in a densely populated area, careful control of air temperature, humidity and bacteria count must be maintained. While raising the chickens in a poultry house is accomplished under automated and manual process control, harvesting the chickens is still a labor intensive procedure which has not changed much over the years.
The harvesting procedure begins by placing a number of chicken coops within the poultry house. A typical chicken coop is formed of 15 cages arranged in rows and columns with three cages in a row and 5 cages in a column all joined together to form a rectangular enclosure. Each cage is formed with a front opening having a pivoted door which provides access to the interior of the cage.
The actual loading is accomplished by men working in pairs. Each man catches a number of chickens in each hand and thrusts them into the opening in the cage, one man following the other, until the cage is full. The door is then closed and the next cage is filled, and so on down the column. During the loading process, there are short intervals of time when the cage opening is unprotected and chickens can escape. In an attempt to thwart the escape, some chickens can be harmed, and the resultant confusion disrupts the loading process.
This invention is directed to the provision of a flexible vision blocking curtain across the loading opening to prevent the escape of chickens during the loading process by interrupting their line of sight.
A number of cages to thwart the escape of chickens have been invented, as typified by U.S. Pat. No. 4,285,299, issued Aug. 25, 1981 to Doverd E. Thomas; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,596,950 issued Jan. 28, 1997 to Briggs et al. The patent to Thomas shows a hinged door arranged at an angle to the horizontal so that the poultry can slide down into the cage and cannot escape. Briggs et al. show a pair of inwardly swinging gates which are biased to a closed position. When loading poultry, the gates swing inwardly to deposit the poultry within the cage and then swing to a closed position.
While the above mentioned patents do teach the design of poultry cages to prevent escape during loading, the prior art does not teach the use of a vision blocking flexible curtain across the opening.